2026 March Madness: Cinderella Casting – Ohio Valley Conference Auto-Bid

For the second year in a row, the stars have aligned and I have the time and opportunity to resume the Cinderella Casting series on Around The Corn Sports Blog.

For those new to the blog (or simply a refresher everyone else), in this series we take a look at each of the small and mid-major conferences and their automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. In the past I have tried to do this in its entirety before the bracket is released, but this year that won’t be possible and therefore a handful of conferences that wrap up their tournaments on the back end of Championship Week will be covered post-bracket release. That being said, projected seeds won’t be assigned for those teams that end up in the later articles.

For those of you keeping score at home, I also assign a “probability” of each automatic bid becoming the next darling of the Dance, which ranges anywhere from “Good” to “Very Unlikely” (the sliding scale is, generally speaking, self explanatory). This will be present for all teams, regardless of whether they were given a projected seed.

Over the course of the next week, you’ll see several similar articles published as the tickets continue to be punched over the course of Championship Week.

Keep checking back to get a head start on finding your diamond(s) in the rough for this year’s NCAA Tournament.

Given that the Ohio Valley Conference makes it a point to be the first conference in the country to award its automatic bid to the Big Dance, we’ll give them an unshared spotlight to kick things off for 2026.

Ohio Valley

Automatic Bid: Tennessee State

Projected Seed: 15

Cinderella Probability: Unlikely

The Tigers, which sport a logo likely to cause some confusion amongst casual viewers thanks to its similarly to LSU’s, will make their first Tournament appearance in over 30 years. Coached by former Duke guard Nolan Smith, Tennessee State is a squad that likes to push the tempo and averages a hair over 80 PPG, with much of the offensive production coming from a trio of guards. The strong backcourt play is led by Aaron Nkrumah, a 6’6” senior that is willing to play both sides of the court. In addition to pouring in 17.6 PPG, Nkrumah also sets the tone defensively with 2.8 steals per contest (second best in the country). As a team the Tigers are ninth best in the nation in steals.

Having a guard like Nkrumah with some size is a benefit, and few teams will outwork the Tigers defensively or collectively on the glass. A strong backcourt is always a nice thing to have in March, too. However, the mention about tempo is a bit misleading because metrics suggest Tennessee State actually plays a bit better when the pace is slowed down. To have a chance at upsetting a high seed, the Tigers will need to play smart offensively and prevent high chance looks defensively. Tennessee State doesn’t shoot or make a ton of threes, so clawing back into a game from a sizeable deficit probably won’t happen.